Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/152

 and underclothed world eager for freedom, indicating that the conducting medium was capable of maladjustment, if not manipulation. “Over-production” is a word as ignorantly used in economics as, formerly, the word “decline” was used in medical diagnosis. In both cases there is a specific foreign element to be looked for, alien to order.

It may be deplored by some that in international exchanges such an arbitrary medium as gold has to be employed. However, it seems likely that it will fall into disuse as international good faith and order are established. At the present time we neither exercise nor look for good faith. We may buy copra in New Guinea, which has recently come under the domination of that advanced democracy, Australia, and find that an export tax has suddenly been imposed, or that we may not carry it in our American vessel from Port Moresby to Sydney, since that (because of the world war for freedom), has suddenly been made “coastwise”—and this is a leaf out of our own book! The Australian may sell his wool at a price delivered New York, duty paid, and find that in the interval we have raised the duty. We are not yet ready to treat our foreign neighbors as sister states, whether wisely or unwisely may be fairly argued. Our transactions are guarded and owing to the occasional necessity of a quick get-away, our international medium of exchange must be tangible and portable, even though we can avoid the delusion that it has an unchangeable value.

As things stand now we are all aware that the United States has too much gold and the rest of the world not enough. As stated elsewhere, there was probably insufficient to go round before the dislocation of war. In a fight that was opened nobly in the name of Freedom our allies went down into the pit; and for awhile, in their desperate extremity, we fed and clothed them. Finally we went down to help them. Between us all the menace to the world’s freedom was stamped out: but we not only left them in the pit, we very reluctantly came home with the ladder, their means of exit; for many of these countries are far more dependent upon international communica-